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Back to the Future – or not

Last week I was in Yenagoa in Bayelsa State, Nigeria for the inaugural meeting of the International Society for Comparative Education, Science and Technology. There was a WEF strand in the conference, and we had a discussion about education. Like so many discussions about education, we bemoaned the problems that beset modern education – a lack of discipline, a lack of respect for teachers, a lack of focus on learning for its own sake, and a loss of values among children distracted by the diversity of attractions that are available today.

If all this sounds like nostalgia for a Golden age, then probably it is. We wish that children could enjoy the childhood that we enjoyed. The trouble is that, even if we actually enjoyed the childhood we remember (and that is by no means certain) we cannot design our education system today on the basis that we can turn the clock back thirty, forty or even a hundred years.

We cannot wish the mobile phone uninvented. Schools may pretend that they do not exist, by getting pupils to turn them off or put them away as they come into the school, but we really know that there is no way back. Actually, the example of the mobile phone or smart phone is quite a good example. Teachers are concerned about the use of mobile phones, that children will be distracted, will be texting their friends, will be thinking more about their social lives than about the lessons they are supposed to be studying. That is certainly something to be worried about. In new technology terms, it is as distracting as those crewed up paper notes that we used to pass along under the desk during our classes. The new technology may make the message passing a bit more effective, but it would be hard to say that mobile phones pose a new threat to scholarship.

On the other hand, smart phones can have a positive side. On two occasions in the past two years students have come up to me after a class and told me that they had followed up something I had mentioned or we had been discussion on the internet and they had found more information that was of interest and that they would pursue. Admittedly, these were masters students, but they show the possibility of opening up the classroom to outside influences, outside information, in a way that was not previously possible.

The key question here cannot be, “How do we get rid of the new technology?”; it must be, “How do we make sure that we get the best out of the new technology?” Are there ways that we can encourage the positive use of smart phones in the classroom, so that children will not be tempted to use them only to arrange to meet their friends in the recess or after school. Of course, they will arrange to meet their friends and pass messages, but teachers need to remember two things: first, that it has always gone on, and it would have been ridiculous for our teachers to ban pencils and paper, just in case we passed message3s along the back of the classroom, and second, that children who are worried about their peers, and whether they are going to meet them, are unlikely to be able to concentrate on lessons anyway.

But much of the issue here is not about the technology as such, but it is about attitudes. Teachers are worried that if they have to compete with Wikipedia in the classroom, they will no longer be respected as a source of knowledge. Teachers are not as highly respected as they used to be in many cultures, and part of that is that teachers have lost the position of sole arbiters on matters of learning. On that question, I think that we have to face facts; teachers are not, any longer, the sole source of knowledge, even if they ever were. Having acknowledged that, teachers can only make themselves ridiculous by trying to pretend that they are still the fount of all true knowledge. We have to make sure that we are offering something else, like critical insight, evaluation, and, if at all possible, wisdom.

It stands to reason that if children have access to multiple sources of information, especially if those sources of information are contradictory, children will challenge their teachers more forcefully. We should welcome that with the same kind of enthusiasm with which we applaud students attending pro-democracy marches, expressing themselves through student societies and finding satisfaction in work in the community. Nobody is owed respect just because they are figures of authority. Students know this, and teachers need to learn it, too. Challenging authority, all authority, is part of being engaged in modern, post-industrial society, and we need to come to terms with that. The loss of status of teachers is linked to the loss of status of political demagogues, of petty bureaucrats who follow the rules simply because they are the rules, and other authority figures. This may well involve thinking again about what it is to be a teacher, what should be done in the classroom, and how we should organise our schools.

There is plenty of positive change here that we should hope to take advantage of, but we will not be able to do so if our only answer is nostalgia.

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2 thoughts on “Back to the Future – or not”

I think the Asian Conference in Mumbai early this year on ‘Role of Information and Communication Technologies in Reading and Developing Learning Society’ emphasised the importance of mobiles in learning. I was a skeptic but am convinced after hearing the many speakers at the conference including David Turner that mobiles etc. are a necessity.

indeed Judith, — there was a time when we were not allowing mobile phones in the schools. they would be confiscated for the term. today however, we are encouraging students to use the immense possibilities of the mobiles and tablets to access more and more information and come up with the latest in every area of interest. This acts as well, as a motivator , students are vying with each other to get the latest and the best available on the internet. it also makes teachers and students communicate with each other in real time. Education is moving more and more towards making it easier for students to access information and for education to access students who could not be easily reached earlier. we have surely come a long way!!